When attempting to understand butch/femme, it is best, in my opinion, to approach the topic with an intent to seek out stories from those who use the label, and those who were present during the period of its formation. The following quotes and stories come directly from the voices of these individuals, offering important insight into what particularly guides their interactions and what drove them to resonate with these labels.
"I have always been a femme. Growing up, my mother encouraged me to be feminine, bold, strong, seductive, yielding, and able. She also encouraged me to climb trees, build things, and play sports. I had a wonderful coming-out experience with a butch woman in upstate New York. I remember her telling me, "Lisa, the way you look and the way you act is beautiful and wonderful; it's so exciting to me. There are women who love you and who love who you are." This wasn't what I was told in the lesbian community at the time, because anything but androgyny was not politically correct."Lisa Winters
"I am the "baby butch" of the group. Being a self-identified butch under thirty, I've always been awed by the butch-femme mystique of the 1930s. '40s, and 50s. What helped with this admiration was that I was raised with a butch aunt who was always out. I think I share a respect common among younger butches for generations past, who believe that it's important to continue what has always made butches unique - the ability to resist an oppressive heterosexual society by being who we are and defining what we desire in women.Our subculture evolved between the sixties and nineties and allowed a new generation of butches to re-emerge in a broader, more radical style. The spectrum has changed for women who identify as butch. A butch can be a bottom, a butch can desire other butches."Val Tavai
"I have always loved women passionately. I love the way a femme moves across a dance flor, knowing all eyes are focused on her. I love the hard eye-to-eye look from another butch as she sizes me up for competition -- or her next conquest. I love the fluid seduction of a femme's eyes. I love the smell of her, the taste of her, the feel of her. I love women passionately.Some women do not attend my theater or literary events for fear of supporting my sexual politics. I have been accused of recruiting. Never mind that I have a long history of writing, community organizing, and activism. Now I am judged solely for my leather sexuality. It's never been easy being different, but I have always survived. I will continue to speak out, write truths, and make waves. My countryman Mao Zedong wrote, "Dare to struggle, dare to win." I say, dare to write. Dare to be different. And who says nice Chinese girls don't talk about sex?"Kitty Tsui
Pat Carter, Butch, 1992
“Pat Carter is the consummate butch. She’s a mechanic and a cop. She won the gold medal in arm wrestling at the police olympics. She wears men’s suits because women’s clothes don’t fit her. With a burly 5’10” frame and a sturdy jaw, Patricia, 44, is frequently mistaken for a man. ‘I was never interested in girly things,’ she says. ‘It’s just the way I am.'”
Jaime Barber, Femme, 1991
“Every time my lover gets harassed when she is identified as a woman who lives in opposition to her strict gender assignment, I get completely outraged. Her life is a particular kind of challenge, often bitterly addressed. A challenge mine will never present. I understand as a lesbian who passes for straight in almost every public setting I’m in, that she does visibility work for me every day, she takes risks minute by minute that I am never forced to assume. She takes the anti-lesbian hits meant for all of us. She is a warrior-shero in the best sense of the word. And at my femme best, I am her reward. When we “pass” on the street as a straight couple, I feel connected to generations of passing couples, who lived in defiance of cultures that so suppressed lesbian identity that there weren’t even words for their partnership. When we are recognized on the street as a queer couple, I feel thrilled to be the femme on her arm, the antidote to all those ‘ugly dyke’ epithets, her solace, her jewel.”
